I was told the other guys will cut the barrier to fit my crawl space, do you do that?

We heard about this some time ago, and the short answer is NO. Here’s why, every crawl space is different and takes a slightly different approach to do it right. The other guys would have you believe that you must take our product into the crawl space as a full roll and somehow man handle it to fit your crawl space. That our products are too big and bulky to efficiently work with in such a tight area and that it is nearly impossible to do. So, they will cut each piece of their product for you so you are working with much smaller amounts of material or “fabric” and therefore this difficult job will become nearly as easy as baking a pie.

We have all heard the phrase, if it seems too good to be true then it probably is. Here is what they don’t want you to know, everyone installing anyone’s products has to cut the barrier on the job site before it goes into the crawl space. That is how they do it, I do it and every other professional does it, but in turn advises you differently. This is not as easy as baking a pie and having your pieces cut by anyone not actually installing it could end up being a nightmare patch job. I have personally installed over 300 jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, North Carolina, and Tennessee and I have never cut my pieces before hand and taken them to the job to be installed. The only way it would work is to be wasteful and over estimate everything or expect to do a lot of patching.

If you really think about it you would need instructions just to know what piece went where and that is before you even think about how to install it. So once you sort out what pieces are your walls and which are your floors you need to decide which wall pieces to start with and where they go. So when you have the walls figured out you have to take them in and install them. They claim you do not need mechanical fasteners for their product. That sounds easy enough, until you have to keep gluing it back up to the wall. Then, what if your measurement was off by 6”, which makes their cut off by 6” and your walls are too short to reach the floor piece? I could keep going but I think you get the idea.

Encapsulating a crawl space is not like putting together a cheap entertainment system from Wal-Mart. It takes a plan and proper preparation and most certainly it takes the installer cutting his or her own pieces of vapor barrier to get it done right with minimal waste. They know this, but chose to make this process seem so easy they can do most of the work for you from their house.

How many home improvement projects have you done as a DIY’er go exactly as planned? Ever have to go back to the home improvement store to get more material because it didn’t go like you thought? This type of project is no different. It’s your home and you have final say on what you buy and how you buy it but don’t get roped into this kind of sales pitch.